Jackson on Hansen: ‘He did everything right’

As Phil Jackson continues a tour to promote his new book, “11 Rings,” he keeps making it sound as if Chris Hansen would have let him run the Sonics franchise, were Hansen to have sprung the Kings from Sacramaento.

On the “Dan Patrick Show” Tuesday, Jackson reiterated his interest, this time saying had a deal, and seem to be very impressed with Hansen.

“I had an agreement with the guy that put the deal together for Seattle — Chris Hansen,” Jackson said. “I thought he was dynamic. I thought he had great ideas. He went through the whole process of getting an arena. He did everything right except win the franchise.”

Hansen, the Seattle native and hedge fund manager, offered $625 million buy the Kings, but NBA owners, by a vote of 22-8 heavily influenced by commissioner David Stern, thwarted the Jackson-Hansen partnership by denying relocation.

“But his vision I could buy into,” Jackson said. “I thought he had the right vision for a team. And he made basically the offer of, ‘Take what you want to take as a job. As a consultant? If you want to be an owner, be a part owner . . . Work in the basketball operations side if you want to or coach.’”

It didn’t matter to him. We talked about a number of things.”

The portion of the video interview addressing his interest in Seattle begins at about the 11:45 mark.

YourThoughts

jafabian

There’s about 22 people in the NBA who should listen to this.

Leon Russell

This sounds a lot like what the Maloofs were saying about Hansen before the Maloofs gave Hansen a $30 million wedgie.
Hansen appears to be a novice with tons of Steve Ballmer’s money that he doesn’t mind throwing away, so obviously there are going to be people who are going to try to get some of Ballmer’s money for themselves. The Maloofs did a good job of taking some of Ballmer’s loose change. Now Jackson wants in on it.
A fool and his money are soon parted.

Michael Kaiser

I know Jackson stepped into a situation with arguably the greatest player of all time combined with one of the greatest supporting players of all time, and then moved on to a team with arguably THE two league superstars on it, with one of them almost certainly becoming the player of his generation, but how many projects has Jackson been involved with that involved trying to buy a team, let alone bring it to another city? Yet here he is talking about what a good job Hansen did? LOL. If I did not know better I would say Jackson is trying to butter Hanson up in case Jackson gets another chance before he turns 90 to run a Sonics organization.

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